[362] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Google Pilloried For Fighting Blog Spam
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (privacy@vortex.com)
Tue Jul 1 20:30:30 2008
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Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:10:44 -0700
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Google Pilloried For Fighting Blog Spam
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000397.html
Greetings. As the "Google conspiracy freaks" seem to be gathering
with increasing frequency, I find it necessary to once again note a
new situation where it appears that good deeds by Google don't go
unpunished ( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000361.html ).
In today's saga, anti-Obama bloggers are essentially accusing Google
of censorship, by virtue of supposedly permitting Obama supporters
to manipulate Google's blogging platform and block anti-Obama blogs
( http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/01/business/google.php ).
That the Google system apparently misclassified the blogs in
question is seemingly not a matter of dispute, but the evidence
suggests that the problem was caused by an unintended consequence of
Google's aggressively effective anti-spam mechanisms, which like all
other complex mechanisms created by mere humans, can be subject to
error.
In fact, if Google didn't aggressively filter for spam-related
materials in that environment, the entire related infrastructure
could quickly fall into useless chaos and people would be screaming
at Google about that, we can be sure.
As anyone who has worked with spam filters knows, there is a
complicated balance involved in spam detection, and it's inevitable
that sometimes mischaracterization of traffic will occur. In very
large and by necessity highly automated environments, this can
potentially result in problems such as those reported in this
situation.
Just like any other responsible party faced with such a situation,
Google will analyze the circumstances that triggered this event and
I have no doubt make appropriate changes to help avoid a repetition.
So let's try to keep these sorts of events in perspective. Nobody
was killed, no planets were detonated, the space-time continuum is
(according to my instrumentation) still humming along in its usual
somewhat inscrutable fashion.
Complex systems (and even many simple systems for that matter) are
almost never perfect. Making a Matterhorn out of a pimple as in
this case doesn't advance the ball in a useful and positive way for
anyone.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com or lauren@pfir.org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
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